BLOG 58: DREAMS AND EXTREMES
I know it’s not the same for everyone, but I dream … a LOT!
I have just come to the end of a ‘mini project’ that I set for myself which was to write up all my dreams which - over the years - I have written out on hundreds of scraps of paper. OK not so ‘mini’ after all! There were well over 400 scribbles to decipher. I know there were plenty more dreams – but these were the ones I managed to catch and hold on to for long enough to get something down on paper.
Unsurprisingly, as it was all written half asleep, some of the writing is completely illegible but from what I could make out I have now written up onto the computer so finally there is a half-decent, legible record. I am not sure why I felt compelled to do this but the next step will be to actually read though them all – that’s a bit of a scary prospect!
Some of the dreams came complete with a little drawing, some came with a bit of music that I did my best to note down. Most of them came with an atmosphere that I can easily recall when I read them – even scents, textures and sounds. I had (and continue to have) fantastic dreams where I am flying effortlessly high over the seas, cities and forests, sometimes I’m way up in a calm, silent starry night sky or barrelling through storm clouds. Other times I am swimming in oceans and rivers, or deep under the water – all very active and visceral.
Then there are nightmares and the extreme vivid dreams – a small number of which have turned out to presage actual events. The most startling of the latter was on Christmas Eve 2004 – when I dreamt about a tsunami (not a word in common parlance at the time). Husband Chris was my only witness here, finding me wide awake in the middle of the night in our sitting room, sweating, shaking and in tears, trying to write it all down – I took a lot of calming down. Two days later the ‘Boxing Day Tsunami’ happened, killing more than 230,000 people. Coincidence? I often wonder if lots of people had similar dreams around that event.
The other extreme is the surreal, completely bizarre stuff. I love these dreams, often they are infused with intense colour, they are hilarious and I have woken myself up laughing out loud. Dreams that spring to mind are finding Chris at a music festival and discovering his legs were electric toothbrushes, in another there were lots of little potato shaped creatures that ate insects and another one where my mum went shopping with Picasso and they both looked like Picasso drawings!
Of course a lot of the dreams are junk and there are those embarrassing ones where it’s a huge relief to wake up - but I often think about ones where I have curious and extraordinary talents like being able to run really fast or jump ridiculously high, have long intricate conversations in strange languages or breathe underwater. Brilliant stuff!
I love dreaming and the limitless and random nature of what I assume is our subconscious that links us to that wider web and energy of the unknown.
So now I have sorted my dreams into some sort of loose order who knows where it will lead? Next I just need to move on to that other pile of papers labelled ‘Ideas/Beginnings of stories, poems and lyrics’!
It’s like herding my own little mental cats!
Sweet dreams all.
